Noting that Peter Langston is mentioned in the video posted under Geniac Replica Instructions I see his earliest work is rediscovered and resurrected here:
(Peter Langston having a bit of a history with computer games, but of course unrelated to Chris Langton of Ant and Loop fame with whom I’d momentarily confused him.)
The author is Peter Langston, who when asked if this is really from 1974 says:
“As I remember I came up with the idea for Wander and wrote an early version in HP Basic while I was still teaching at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA (that system limited names to six letters, so: WANDER, EMPIRE, CONVOY, SDRECK, GALAXY, etc.). Then I rewrote Wander in C on Harvard’s Unix V5 system shortly after our band moved to Boston in 1974. I got around to putting a copyright notice on it in 1978.”
Very interesting post! 30 years ago, I wrote my own framework for text-adventures in Basic, which was able to “run” non-linear fantasy books from a german book publisher.
I named the framework (very original) FANFRAME and designed an own makro assembler like control language.
I believe that text adventures always will have their place among the most sophisticated graphics games.
Or, as André Heller stated in a song: “The real adventures are in your head, and when they are’nt in your head, they’re nowhere.”